THE TWELVE-MILE STRAIGHT
by Eleanor Henderson
Oh my, incest, moonshine, sharecropping, KKK, lynching,
twins (one white, one black), chain gangs and everything else bad about 1920’s
Georgia. It is all here along with a meandering timeline, numerous plots and
sub-plots and the “N” word. If this sounds
exhausting – it is. There is just soooo
much going on in this 540 page tome that it is WORK to read it.
There is an interesting and valuable story here. The
characters include a moonshining sharecropper with a problematic background, a
teenaged daughter and a teenaged live-in black “maid.” Juke (the sharecropper/moonshiner) hires a
black male farmhand. The farmhand has a relationship with both daughter and
maid. Daughter has a relationship with the farm owner’s son that ends badly. Both teens are pregnant.
The farmhand is lynched and dragged down the twelve-mile straight roadway to
the delight (for a time) of the entire town. The son is accused of the murder
and disappears – and that is just the beginning section of the book.
The characters are clearly drawn. The time and place are
well defined. The situations are believable.
But the whole thing is sooo long and the time meanders from before to after and
back again with no clear delineation. The
final resolutions are clear and satisfying.
Dates at the start of each event would be helpful. A little (a lot?) of
editing would help.
3 stars for length and confusing timeline
